shipping a car
 

Anyone here ever ship a car? I'm looking at shipping my Miata to me out here, from Jacksonville. A friend recommended DASautoshippers.com, and the prices seem reasonable, but I thought I'd see if anyone else has used something different or what sort of advice they might have.

TIA

Yes I have, and have never had a good experience. Luckily, I've never had anything damaged, but they were always seriously late.

Your dad has the car right? Have him put a good coat of wax on it, take the front lip off (and stow it in the car or UPS is to you), and take a bunch of good pictures.

Expect the car to show up later than promised. Look hard for damages before signing.

Samnavy shipped his car. Ask him.
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I'm working on having a Jeep Cherokee shipped coast to coast myself. Here's a website that rates auto transporters, though the reviews should be taken with a grain of salt:

Transport Reviews.com - Ratings and Reviews of Auto Transport Companies - Your Source For Finding a Quality Auto Transporter!

You can click on the website of the various brokers (they're almost all brokers) and fill in their on-line quote request form. You tell them what kind of vehicle you have, give them an email address, and give them the zip codes of where the vehicle's coming from and where it's going to. About a minute later they send the quote.

Since they are brokers, and they're mixing and matching pick-ups and drop-offs, it's probably best if you're really flexible about delivery times.

If you're shipping something valuable, or a convertible, you'll want to arrange to have your vehicle transported on the top rack, and be prepared to pay a bit extra for the privilege of not having various auto fluids leaking on your car. Being in the military is worth a discount of between $20 and $50, which is better than no discount.

Just take the car to a FedEX Kinko's and tell them you need it shipped.

You could put it in a container and ship it by itself.... have no clue what the cost is though...but you know it'll be much safer.

I just bought my miata from MXV and had it shipped from SC to CT. I used 1-2-GO2 shipping (Scott) and it worked out great. I read lots of reviews on different brokers and they had hundreds of great reviews. I had it shipped in an enclosed trailer, $800. If I opted for an open trailer, would have only cost $500. The good thing about them is they don't require a deposit to schedule your pickup date and you only pay them once the car is loaded on the trailer. Give Scott a call there and don't even think twice. Best of luck to ya!

The m.netters seem to ship a lot of cars and I have HEARD DAS bantered around quite a bit as a good source when I used to follow that board.

I used dependable auto shippers for my C3. Came in a timely manner and the price was fair. Car was excessively dirty though and it was severely caked on. So as Ben suggested a proper waxing is a good idea or go fully enclosed if your budget permits such things.

From the prices I've seen it seems like a plane ticket and a few tanks of gas are cheaper than shipping. I'd definitely prefer to go pick it up and drive home.

it's too bad my dad's already towing something with his RV. they're doing a bay area to DC trip and jacksonville could have been added on the way back for a nominal fee. :)

I shipped my Miata from Jacksonville, NC to Gothenburg, Sweden, using DAS. They where badly organized, friendly (but lost and unorganized in a scarry way). The car came ahead of schedule but with paint damages, which DAS later payed the repairs of without fuss.

But here is what pissed me off:
The car arrived in Gothenburg quite dirty, with the heater on max, an old paper coffe cup on the floor and the protective papers kicked into one corner. WTF?! When I asked DAS what their explanation was, they said somebody might have had a coffee break in the car. WTF again!! I respect that the car was not worth a lot compared with several others that they loaded up, but using a customers car to get warm and have a coffee break just can not be OK.

I have done it a few times and its a whore every time. Make sure you pay with a CC so you can dispute the charges if the car is damaged, or when all of a sudden the shipping company won't pick up the phone, or goes out of business and passes the job off to someone else......it happened to me. 1 month from NJ to CO.

:giggle: Thats funny. Sad, but funny. I can see some 6' 6'' fat guy climbing in to escape the cold with a hot cup of coffee, complaining about your tiny gay car, while he thrashes around to get comfy. Then lets a hot nasty fart rip on your seats, then chases himself out of the car with no chance to fix the paper in the floor. At least thats the scenario I see.

I'm going to go +1 on the plane tickets and driving. I wouldn't trust a shipping company, unless it was one of those high dollar car carriers that carry high dollar cars. Even then I would need tons of before pictures.

I shipped my Miata from CA to Baltimore, MD using DAS and aside from it taking a long time, everything came as promised.

Frank

Thanks man! :fawk: Really, thanks for posting that!
Then again, could have been worse. Could have been a gay man loving my gay car, doing something far worse then farting in there. :jerkit: Maybe his legs where trashing around for some complete other reason?

I am going to go burn my seat now. Then have a shower.

My 4Runner has been shipped twice. First was from Houston to Seattle and it took way longer than initially quoted. But there was pretty brutal snow on the mountain passes so I can accept that there may have been a weather delay. The truck was clean when I left it, and totally goddam filthy when I received it. It also had a few nifty scratches on the roof, which I didn't see before I signed for it because (conveniently) they delivered it to me at night and totally goddam filthy. I actually don't remember what company that was, and I don't know what the cost was since my relocation expenses on that trip were paid by a 3rd party. But the take home lesson from this is don't sign for the car until you look it over with a fine-toothed comb, preferably during daytime. If they insist on a nighttime drop off it could be because they fucked something up and are hoping you won't notice.

I had it shipped again from Seattle to NoVA when I moved here a couple years ago. I used Magic Carpet and the cost was right around $1K with an open trailer. As posted above, many of the smaller companies are more or less brokers. They'll handle the short trip at the origin and/or destination, but hand the vehicle off to another company that has a spot on their trailer for the longer haul in between. There is a lot of potential for delay with that type of arrangement. I drove a Penske truck 2 days from Seattle to Denver, picked up some stuff from my mom's house, 2 more days to Houston to pick up the wife and her shit, and 2 more days up to NoVA, and when I got to NoVA they still hadn't gotten my truck out of Seattle. Fortunately we had another vehicle. Expect delays because they will happen. The main thing is that the vehicle arrives unharmed, which it did in this case.

i shipped a car once, really cheap, like $700 to wisconson. 2 weeks late to pick it up, truck got stuck on my street and then blew a hydraulic line taking a tight turn....wasn't fun.

then the hippie police showed up and called the hazmat crew when they were finally going to head off. wasted another 2 hours of a truck blocking traffic. stupid hippies.

Just contracted with AmeriFreight at: AmeriFreight Car Shipping Company

$835 from the San Francisco Bay area to West Point in New York. They were the least expensive highly rated shipper by between 10% and 25%. Of course everything can still go to hell, but I thought the price was pretty reasonable considering the distance.

My father shipped his 57 Jag to the Bahama's once. At the time it went from CA to FL on Passport Transport, and they fucked up the car. Some how they managed to twist the frame on the car, and the drivers door would never close right after that.

At one of the local Miata M&Gs some one had a Miata shipped from east coast to CA. As I recall they effed up a fender while shipping it.

You are best to drive it cross country or pay some one to drive it for you. Transport companies always manage to fuck up something.

On a side note when I sold my Tahiti jet boat I had it shipped to Hawaii. Towed it to the port of Oakland where the boat was put on a pallet on its edge. Then they stuck the pallet in a container. We then removed the axle from the trailer, and cut the trailer in half, and loaded it into the same container. That was $1700 to ship my Tahiti from CA to HI.

Thanks everyone for the advice, I just made my appointment with DAS to ship the car out, they're honoring the $687 I was quoted even though it's a convertible and has been modified because I'm having the coilovers rasied and the hardtop nullifies the whole gotta-ship-convertibles-on-top bit. w00t! The price if it was under 4" ground clearance and convertible was going to be $19XX!!!